Drax ends investment in White Rose CCS project

The Capture Power Ltd partnership – Drax, Alstom and BOC – is progressing the White Rose Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project, investigating into capturing up to 90% of carbon emissions from a new coal-fired power plant and safely storing it below the North Sea. The project is due to conclude during the next 6 – 12 months.

Drax plans to stop further investment into the project beyond its existing Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) study and will withdraw as a partner of Capture Power, the developer of the White Rose CCS project.

Drax has indicated it will be fully committed to completing its current work on the project. It will continue to make the site owned by Drax, along with the infrastructure at the power plant, available for the project to be built. The company will complete a study into the feasibility and development of technology that help to decrease large amounts of carbon emissions from power plants.

Drax Group Operations Director, and Capture Power Board Director, Pete Emery said: “We are confident the technology we have developed has real potential, but have reluctantly taken a decision not to invest any further in the development of this project. The decision is based purely on a drastically different financial and regulatory environment and we must put the interests of the business and our shareholders first.

Emery continued: “We will focus our resources on the areas, which we can deliver best value, particularly working with government to explore the potential for converting a fourth generating unit to run on sustainable biomass … Drax still believes this project has great potential and we have announced that the site at the Drax Power Plant, along with our existing infrastructure remain available for the project to be built.”